Category Archives: Uncategorized

New York Times, June 15, 2005William Hamilton: “I‘ve never before felt like losing was winning,” said Lee Mindel of Shelton, Mindel & Associates, a New York architecture firm, who was the underbidder. Cristina Grajales, the New York dealer who won … Continue reading →

From the New York Times, June, 1, 2005David M. Halbfinger The diminutive Mr. Greenwald, 61, is leading this assault on the retailing behemoth of Bentonville, Ark., from a converted hot-sheets motel in Culver City, Calif. There, where MGM executives once … Continue reading →

From the New York Times, June, 1, 2005David M. Halbfinger The diminutive Mr. Greenwald, 61, is leading this assault on the retailing behemoth of Bentonville, Ark., from a converted hot-sheets motel in Culver City, Calif. There, where MGM executives once … Continue reading →

L.A. Existential By BRUCE WAGNER New York Times,May 23, 2005 Los AngelesNO one here even knew there was an election last week. I couldn’t have said it better than the San Francisco Chronicle (as quoted in L.A. Weekly): Wagner’’s fiction … Continue reading →

Manohla Dargis writes in the May 10, 2005, New York Times: OS ANGELES – Los Angeles is in love with the idea of its own self-destruction; it’s hard to think of another American city so similarly possessed. Actually, no. New … Continue reading →

New York Times, April 26, 2005OCAS DEL TORO, Panama – Dr. Jeremy Jackson is in an open boat, speeding across the waters of Laguna de Chiriquí, on the Caribbean coast of Panama. His graying red pony tail is frizzing and … Continue reading →

Hollywood writers, and those who aspire to be Hollywood writers, are fond of saying there are only so many plots in the world. The number varies depending on when the speaker went to film school, but it’s usually low and … Continue reading →

New York Times, April 30, 2005“I always wanted to drive a bus because it’s big, it’s huge,” Ms. Small, 36, said as she picked through a fried shrimp sandwich on a recent lunch break. “My own personal conquest, I guess.”

Verlyn Klinkenborg writes (Saturday, April 16, 2005) in the New York Times about the rites of the Los Angeles carwash, explaining them to car-bereft New Yorkers as if we were Trobriand Islanders: For weeks, I drove past our local carwash … Continue reading →

I came across Thomas Lynch’s op/ed piece in Saturday’s (April 9, 2005) New York Times quite by accident.While it appears to be about death (Lynch is a funeral director–and I have promised to keep the noir off this blog), his … Continue reading →

I spent the evening listening to a concert version of Act III of “Siegfried” performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti on April 16, 1980, which I haven’t heard since I recorded it off the air 25 … Continue reading →

Amazon recentlly made a curious addition to its “Search Inside” feature: Statistically Improbable Phrases. Amazon explains: Statistically Improbable Phrases, or “SIPs”, show you the interesting, distinctive, or unlikely phrases that occur in the text of books in Search Inside the … Continue reading →

HE second “Greater New York,” the youth-besotted, cheerful, immodestly ingratiating jumbo survey of contemporary art….Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, March 18, 2005

I‘ve always wondered why writers devote space to what the subjects of their profiles eat during an interview. Maybe they’re justifying the restaurant charges on their expense accounts. Here are a few gustatory delights: Ned Martel, New York Times, March … Continue reading →

Someone at the Washington Post turned in a great headline on a recent Tom Shales review: ‘Fat Actress’: Jolly-Unsaturated It’s quite a trick to summarize an entire review in two words, but the headline writer did it cleverly and with … Continue reading →

In an oped piece for the New York Times, (March 5, 2005) Jessica Queller, a writer for “The Gilmore Girls,” describes her mother growing up “in a small house on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.” I can just see the … Continue reading →

The tributes have poured in and some of his works have been reprinted since Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide Sunday, although one could easily say he killed himself in bits and pieces years ago. It seems few writers at the … Continue reading →

I recently came across my Dave Brubeck albums while going through my old collection of LPs and discovered that “Jazz: Red Hot and Cool,” recorded in 1954 and 1955, was done in partnership with the Helena Rubinstein cosmetics company and … Continue reading →

The New Yorker recently republished Kenneth Tynan’s 1978 profile after the death of Johnny Carson on Jan. 24, 2005, and I spent some time picking it apart since magazine writing is a formula that I’ve never mastered, although I can’t … Continue reading →